Archive for July, 2006
I’ve already written a fair bit about the proposed cuts to ACTION Buses (see here and here), but RiotACT recently mentioned that the Transport Workers Union were handing out postcards for people to sign and post to Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope. RiotACT only had a tipoff at that stage, and I have been waiting to get my hands on a postcard before saying anything.
Yesterday evening on my way home from work I was very pleased to have the bus driver hand me a postcard. The postcards contain some background information on the proposed cutbacks, and even feature a reply paid address so that you don’t have to pay to send them. The postcards go to the Transport Workers Union who will then present them to the Chief Turnip.
I will be filling my one out and sending it in, but I have taken the liberty of doing a couple things first.
I have scanned the postcards for your benefit, and I have also produced a downloadable form for those of you who wish to convey your disappointment with the proposed cutbacks, but do not have access to a postcard. You will need to mail the form and pay for the postage (50 cents, surely that’s not an issue) as I’m not sure of the legalities of simply mailing something to a reply paid address if it is not officially printed. The download link for the form (in Acrobat PDF format) can be found below.
If you would like to convey your disappointment with the proposed cutbacks to ACTION, to the Chief Turnip, click here to download the form. When you have filled it in, please post it to
Transport Workers Union
PO Box 649
PARRAMATTA NSW 2124
Samuel
July 25th, 2006 at 01:19am
I was having a little sticky beak in the Firefox help files for no particular reason when I encountered something which made stop and send an email off to the Security Now! podcast.
Hi Steve and Leo,
I was just poking around in Mozilla Firefox and noticed something in the “Help for Internet Exploer Users” section:
“About Your IE Favorites and Settings
When you first install Firefox, it will import your existing Internet Explorer settings, including your Favorites, cookies, stored passwords, and a variety of other data. This saves you time customizing Firefox to fit your needs.”
The important part of that is that Firefox imports IE’s stored passwords, which raises a question of security with those passwords being on my hard drive.
I’m not concerned about other people using my computer and using my stored passwords as I don’t store super-sensitive passwords, but if somebody were to store a password of some importance, how easy would it be for some malware to access those passwords? The innocuous Firefox can do it, what’s stopping malware from doing it?
By the way, if you read this on SN52, congratulations on one year of Security Now!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra, Australia
Admittedly I could, with a few minutes, find out the answer for myself, but I’m sure I’m not the only one to ever wonder about this, and somehow I think it would be a perfect question for the Security Now! podcast, and an answer on there would benefit many more people than an answer here (Security Now! has about 100,000 listeners (source)). None the less, I will get an answer on here soon. I’ll wait and see if Steve and Leo discuss this, and if so I’ll include the transcript. If not I’ll just go and do some reasearch for myself.
Samuel
July 24th, 2006 at 04:53pm
I received this interesting bit of spam the other day…it appears to be an insider trading scam.
Ever thought of putting the result of joint work into your own trading career? Now you can do that, making use of great stocking tips worked out by experts!
I know this product will be advertised massively soon, and the stock is doomed to boom in the nearest future.
The email then goes on about a ringtone company before ending like this:
Enter the opportunity with this stock, and you’ll leave with totally handsome gains.
Don’t knock on wood – just learn to be a pro trader, and the rest will flow!
And the subject of this peculiar bit of spam? That should be obvious…”great gain on pink sheets, read a message”, oh, not obvious? Hmmm
Samuel
July 24th, 2006 at 10:32am
I think I can sum up that weekend’s footy tips by saying “not so great”.
AFL Round 16: 3/8 (37.50%)
NRL Round 20: 2/7 (28.57%)
Week Total: 5/15 (33.33%)
Totals:
AFL: 66/128 (51.56%)
NRL: 69/138 (50%)
Total: 135/266 (50.75%)
Samuel
July 24th, 2006 at 06:29am
This week the award goes to Lobo, and the feature song is “A Simple Man”, although it could easily have been a number of other songs.
Where do butterflies go when it rains?
Who goes around & tucks in the trains?
What makes a teddy bear like to sleep?
Why do we all make promises that we can’t keep?
Where do puppy dogs go when their sad?
And what do elephants say when their mad?
Who do you tell if you don’t have a friend?
Why do we open our mouths and stick our foot in?
These are the things that bother me,
Not a lot of things across some sea,
I don’t even have a master plan,
I guess that I am just a simple man.
Tell me, where do robins sleep on the road?
And how can a little ant carry that load?
Why write words that we have to erase?
Why does everyone have more than one face?
These are the things that bother me,
Not a lot of things across some sea,
I don’t even have a master plan,
I guess that I am just a simple man.
A simple man.
Samuel
July 23rd, 2006 at 07:31pm
Samuel’s Persiflage Episode Number Six is now online. There is also a low quality version for the bandwidth impaired here.
HTML Transcript
PDF Transcript
This month’s Persiflage Puzzle has two words of seven and four letters respectively. The clue is “You would be hard pressed to find a shopping centre which doesn’t have at least one of these.”
The episode kicks off with the persiflage puzzle and a retirement message for Margaret Phillips, the (now retired) Director of Digital Archiving at the National Library of Australia, and guest on Samuel’s Persiflage #5.
Then it’s time to chat with Pia Waugh (on our brand new phone system!), one of the organisers of Linux.Conf.Au 2007 to be held in Sydney. Pia joins us via mobile phone from Armidale.
We chat about Linux.Conf.Au, Australia’s premier technical Linux conference, what it has to offer, and the related “open day” for people who just want to find out more about Linux and Open Source Software. We talk about highlights of conferences gone by, and discuss Open Source Software. Naturally enough, a phone rang in the studio during the interview…these fun interuptions are becoming a bad, but amusing, habit I think.
Pia’s recommended Linux distributions:
Ubuntu
Suse
Red Hat/Fedora
Mandriva
The open source applications Pia mentioned:
Open Office (Office Suite for Linux, Mac and Windows)
Mozilla Firefox (Web Browser for Linux, Mac and Windows)
I then reveal a few more letters in the Persiflage Puzzle…hmmm, actually they’re all letters which aren’t in the puzzle. Not to worry, they help too!
Then we go to the Samuel’s Persiflage listener feedback, which features a berating from one listener over one of the odd news stories from the previous episode, a complaint about the old phone system, praise for Margaret Phillips and more.
All listeners are invited to send in more feedback, both in written and audio format. As per usual feedback can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com (text, MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis), spoken feedback by clicking here or on the button below would be great, or leave a comment below.
Then we have the thought for the month and some more letters from the Persiflage Puzzle.
After this we talk about some of the telephone scams which have been doing the rounds…I was going to Interview somebody from Telstra about them, they asked me to send an email in so that I could speak to the appropriate person, I wrote the email…but I hit “save” rather than “send” and didn’t realise until Friday night…whoops! None the less, we get by quite well and cover some interesting scams and hoaxes.
Under the misapprehension that the episode is running much shorter than usual I play a song which Nattie thinks is great, and then it is time to say goodbye and reveal the answer to the Persiflage Puzzle.
The Samuel’s Persiflage #5 file itself is available here, and is 1:00:41 in length (55.5MB) at 128kbps stereo. The 128kbps format was decided upon because it produces a very good sound quality, and doesn’t “flatten” any music used in the podcast. (You’ve heard it all before, right?) I do, however, acknowledge that this is just unreasonable for dial-up, so a 16kbps mono file is also available here. The sound quality isn’t as good, but some people like it. The low quality version is 6.94MB
For those of you who are using podcast software to receive your podcasts, the feed can be found here and if you are using iTunes you can subscribe to Samuel’s Persiflage by clicking here.
Podcast related questions and comments can be sent to podcast@samuelgordonstewart.com or left in the comments section of this post. Spoken feedback is preferred (but not mandated) and can be sent either in MP3, Wave or Ogg Vorbis format, or sent even more easily by clicking the button below and following the prompts.
Samuel
July 23rd, 2006 at 02:55am
Those of you who notice these things will have just noticed that it is now past midnight, it is Sunday (and thus not Saturday) and therefore Samuel’s Persiflage should be here by now.
Well I’m not going to bed until I get it online, so it will be here very very very soon.
Samuel
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:00am
I’ve received an interesting tipoff from an extremely reliable source…it would appear that ASIO (The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) recently apprehended a man they suspect of emailing bomb threats from a Canberra Internet Cafe.
My source had this to say:
recently a man was apprehended in the Barracks for emailing bomb threats to places regarding him wanting Big Brother to be taken off the air
I will stress that at this stage it is only alleged that the aprehended man emailed bomb threats, also for those of you who don’t know, The Barracks is a LAN Games/Internet Cafe in Civic.
I suspect that this was a lengthy operation by ASIO as it would be very odd for them to just swoop suddenly and catch somebody after a single email. Hopefully the operation has proven to be worthwhile.
Regular readers would know that I’m not a fan of Big Brother, but I respect the right of others to watch and enjoy it, and I strongly denounce the alleged acts of the apprehended man.
Samuel
July 22nd, 2006 at 07:26am
A blonde goes into a nearby store and asks a clerk if she can buy the TV in the corner.
The clerk looks at her and says that he doesn’t serve blondes, so she goes back home and dyes her hair black.
The next day she returns to the store and asks the same thing, and again, the clerk said he doesn’t serve blondes.
Frustrated, the blonde goes home and dyes her hair yet again, to a shade of red.
Sure that a clerk would sell her the TV this time, she returns and asks a different clerk this time.
To her astonishment, this clerk also says that she doesn’t serve blondes.
The blonde asks the clerk, “How in the world do you know I am a blonde?”
The clerk looks at her disgustedly and says,”That’s not a TV — it’s a microwave!”
Do you have something you would like to contribute to Friday Funnies? If so, email to smoothwallsamuel@gmail.com. All contributions welcome!
Samuel
July 21st, 2006 at 10:05am
NRL Round 20
Sea Eagles V Panthers
Tigers V Eels
Knights V Rabbitohs
Bulldogs V Roosters
Storm V Sharks
Cowboys V Broncos
Raiders V Dragons
AFL Round 16
Crows V Kangaroos
Magpies V Eagles
Bombers V Blues
Lions V Hawks
Swans V Tigers
Saints V Power
Cats V Bulldogs
Dockers V Demons
Samuel
July 21st, 2006 at 08:05am
Things you receive in the mail reall can mess with your head…I had a very strange dream the other night, and I blame it on some mail I received a few days ago. The letter was a status update from CIT, which regular readers would know I stopped attending a few months ago, what I didn’t make public at the time is that I never officially unenrolled, a decision I made on principle.
I stopped attending CIT due to a number of factors including health, a high intensity course being condensed into an even higher intensity course and, of course, full-time employment (when the opportunity presents itself…). I discovered that, despite the fact that I had not finished courses, or even had a great attendance record (factors above), officially unenrolling would not allow me to recover any of my course fees, but would result in a decent lump of tedious paperwork…effectively I was not going to gain anything by officially unenrolling, and it would take time and effort away from other things which were starting to fall in to place.
The upshot of all of this is that my course fees are still hard at work maintaining my CIT attendance record and generating the occasional interim report (the document I received in the mail a few days ago).
Anyway, not long after receiving the letter, I had a dream where I was walking down a corridor which looked similar to a corridor at work, I opened a door and walked through, only to find myself in my Requirements Analysis lecture room (I’m still officially enrolled, so it’s my room) where everybody was preparing for the final exam. Realising that I had missed weeks of classes I went into a panic…and then the dream ended.
The thing I really miss about CIT is Cafe Yala…but I’m very happy working, and I can quite easily and happily do without the annoying sound of FM 104.7 breakfast which I was subjected to on many ocasions. No wonder I always sat outside with my radio at that Cafe…much better with the fresh air and 2CC…it was always good in the middle of the morning to talk outside with a coffee, sit down, and listen to Lawsie.
Hmmm, I think I digress, or perhaps I’m reminiscing, either way, this has almost no relevance to the dream, so I’ll stop.
Samuel
July 18th, 2006 at 03:35pm
Another thing I’ve been receiving emails about is the next episode of Samuel’s Persiflage. It is due for release on Thursday night, although I might delay it until Friday night if it enables me to lock in another interview about a topic which a few listeners have requested.
Samuel
July 18th, 2006 at 12:19pm
Every now and then I get emails from people asking me where people who have been mentioned on this website are now, as many of them have changed job or employer since they were mentioned here, so I will go through a list of people who I would like to update you on.
Kane Bond, ex-2CC producer and presenter, recently seen in the Dickson area working for a government department (either that or he has a twin).
Person suspected of being Canberra_Boi, the person who suggested I shouldn’t worry about 2CC and then went on to make defamatory statements about various people at 2CC. Sighted on multiple occasions working for a company with an office on Northbourne Avenue, and sighted at Westfield Belconnen.
Kevin Woolfe, ex-2CC/2CA sports reporter. Now working for ACTTAB, and can be heard acting as media spokesperson for ACTTAB during the Friday edition of 2CC’s Mike Welsh Drive Show.
Robbie McGregor, ex SBS voiceover man. Not surprisingly Robbie has been in high demand since SBS dumped him (and one of their main identifying points), voicing all sorts of advertisements on all sorts of radio stations for all sorts of companies and causes.
George Gibson, ex-2UE weekend middawn announcer. George has been working for 2UE’s main rival 2GB since late December, filling in for various people, mostly on the middawn shift.
Daniel Gibson, ex-temporary 2CA breakfast presenter. After Paul and Leighton took over 2CA breakfast, Daniel took some time off from 2CA before returning to his previous night shift. Daniel is also still the Prime Television weatherman.
Greg Robson, ex-2CA breakfast presenter. Robbo is working for Fyshwick.com and parent company.
Daniel Sutton, ex-2UE news reporter. Now reporting for Channel Ten.
Samuel
July 18th, 2006 at 09:05am
A perfect round in the AFL, an OK round in the NRL, and new record highs for the weekly AFL percentage and overall percentage.
AFL Round 15: 8/8 (100%)
NRL Round 19: 3/7 (42.86%)
Week Total: 11/15 (73.33%)
Totals:
AFL: 63/120 (52.50%)
NRL: 67/131 (51.15%)
Total: 130/251 (51.79%)
Samuel
July 18th, 2006 at 07:19am
I’ve been hearing some rather interesting claims from Hall residents over the last week or so that Hall Primary has asbestos, and that this is the real reason behind the ACT government’s proposed closure of Hall Primary at the end of the year.
If Hall Primary School really does have asbestos then it is no wonder that the ACT government haven’t mentioned it…people would expect them remove the asbestos or build a new school, both of which would cost money…it’s much cheaper for the government to close the school, citing financial or enrolment reasons.
If this information is accurate, then it casts a very serious shadow of doubt over the true reasons for the other school closures proposed as a part of the ACT Budget.
Samuel
July 17th, 2006 at 10:42am
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